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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Late Night Confession Tuesday

Dear Readers,

It's been a week since my last confession, a week and a crazy weekend I am thankful turned out the way it did. Almost Thanksgiving. Almost. There will be some gratitude journals here this week, I promise. And the drawing for that Norton PC Tuneup Service as well. I'll even throw in a broadside from the Making of Peace series I edited.

But back to confessing...let me begin.

Thank you all who dropped me notes about my the mall shooting and my daughter being at a birthday party there when it happened. I appreciated each of them very much. I confess my little blog post was a little reserved, a little reflective, but honestly, I was scared in ways I have never been scared before, as a parent, I had never seen danger close to my daughter. Never seen danger in the same room and not have been there.

Know when it was happening, I could have very easy fallen apart. But I didn't. Fall. Apart. And for me, someone who keeps anxiety near her nightstand, that was a big. I don't want you to believe I have it all together. I don't. I'm not even close to having it all together, but for that moment when I needed to, I did. I had it together enough.

I am someone who can create docu-dramas in my mind of things that never happen, things that would be horrific if they happened, that part of me that wakes me up when I'm sleeping, asks, "What have you forgotten?" But I guess, this real moment where I had to wait, where something terrible could have happened, has slapped my free-floating anxiety around. In fact, I've watched a lot of normal anxiety evaporate, all those imagined seas I swam have dried up a little, and I don't know how long this will last, if it will last, but is a reminder to me that we are all stronger than we think we are.

I'm beginning to believe the demons we can create in our minds are a thousand times scarier than real life, even in the worst of times, I think creative imaginations can be harmful when they make us live in worlds that don't exist, and we live like they exist.

So thank you for your notes. For asking, "Where you terrified?" Yes. For saying how worried you would be. For knowing how worried I was.

*Here Let Me Show You My Hand Before I Give You My Heart--

Jeannine looked at my second manuscript and said I had ordered the poems in a sort of self-protection fashion, I thought that was probably the most insightful thing anyone has ever said about my manuscript.

And I'm going to try to reorder them and not protect myself as much.

*

Alternative to the Material Girls Club--

We're not buying Christmas gifts this year for the adults in our family, only the kids. Our gift to each other is to do 3 acts of kindness from now until Dec. 25, each act to be determined by each of us alone.

On Christmas day we will share the 3 things we did. I'm going to try to do something for a stranger, something for someone I know, and something for a group. We'll see how it all works out. We're discussing the details of this "exchange" on Thanksgiving.

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

3 comments:

That is very scary about your daughter. When you know loved ones are potentially in harms way, it's hard not to fall apart. I had friends all over London and I waited for two agonizing hours after the Tube bombings in 2005 to hear they were okay. Glad you're both okay.

I can't even begin to imagine how you held it all together during the wait. So glad it all turned out okay and your daughter is safe. But it's going to be hard for you to let her out of your sight for a while, I reckon.

Tried the typealizer app., to see what my blog is saying about me. Apparently, whatever it is saying is in Chinese, so can't be analyzed. How cool is that - my own blog is talking behind my back, in Chinese no less. It's enough to make a girl paranoid ...